Hi everyone, newbie here! With the market as it is I was looking to lease a Toyota Avalon Touring or Hybrid Limited as they are discounted in my area. There’s a dealership nearby in metro-Detroit advertising a sale price of $6K off and I was curious what I numbers should I be seeing for leasing? Their website calculator stated $702/month which I know is way too high. I’m willing to put $2-3K down for lease payment and would want tax+title up-front.
Check out the Edmunds forums for Money Factor and Residual
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It is practically impossible for us to tell you what a “good” monthly payment is for your specific lease as lease programs are highly dependent on region, personal qualifications, tax rates, etc.
We always recommend the following method before you ever contact a dealership. If you do all of the work up front, you’ll have a stress free dealer experience and set yourself for success.
- Read Leasing 101 (Blog | LEASEHACKR) to understand how to calculate a lease payment and the variables. Monthly payment is an output, not an input!!
- Pick a specific vehicle that you want to target
- Gather the current MF, RV and incentives from Edmunds forums for your zip code
- Research the LH marketplace and other deals that have been made recently on your vehicle - what was their pre-incentive discount? How did their lease terms differ?
- Plug your numbers into the LH calculator (CALCULATOR | LEASEHACKR), and use a pre-incentive discount similar to what you have seen
- Create a target deal, this is what you’re trying to negotiate to. You can try different terms, selling price discount, etc. and see how your monthly payment is affected. It is also possible that different trims of your vehicle may have different MF and RV (i.e. this is very common with GM), so make sure that you look into that. Come up with a set of inputs that give you the output that you want - your desired monthly payment.
With a target price determined, you now have a deal to pursue and compare dealer offers against. More importantly, you have a solid foundation to work from.
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awwww RIP Avalon! I always had a soft spot for these, I love a big American barge that’s comfy but also stupidly reliable. I just wish they had at least fixed that god-awful front end. They made it so hideous that even all the old folks that bought them were turned away.
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Most cars do not lease well. They do not have the programs (RV, MF and incentives) to be good candidates for lease-hacking, regardless of what dealer discount you can negotiate. This is truer now than it has ever been. Which means you cannot start your search with a particular car or cars in mind, and then find a way to make them lease well.
It will be like pushing a boulder uphill while pulling teeth, and you’ll still probably have a bad deal in the end. You need to start your search by filtering only the vehicles that are leasing well right now and offer good value per dollar.
Check out the “Share a Deal” and “Marketplace” sections of LH forums to decide what’s leasing well and pick a vehicle that is already proven to offer good value.
Remember, there are no magic wands that can save a deal from poor programs (RV, MF, and incentives) and/or poor discounts.
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